First project: a small paid job with a fixed scope
One kind is discovery. You pay me to study your business, and you get a written decision to build, buy or skip, with the signs that mean stop. If the answer is build or buy, you also get a written spec and test questions with known right answers. The other kind is verification: a one-time test of an AI system someone else built. You keep everything either way.
project · fixed scope · one to three weeks